The Necromancer’s Tale Review — Magic Book

The Necromancer’s Tale tells the story of a dark, necromantic 18th-century Italy; the aftermath of a cruel war has introduced dark magic to the world, and the fates of those families responsible for unleashing the curse of undeath upon the Mediterranean have forever been sealed. As the heir to the misfortune of one such responsible party, it’s up to you to unearth the mystery of your father’s death, wield the great and terrible powers he helped unleash, and ultimately get revenge on those who would see your noble house reduced to ash.

Right off the bat, one should not expect The Necromancer’s Tale to be an incredibly mechanically complex or gripping adventure.

Steeped deep in its narrative, with what I was told is 400,000 written words and 180+ unique NPCs, The Necromancer’s Tale is very clearly here to tell its story. If that is what you’re looking for, you are definitely in luck; there is hardly a moment before you are engaged in another lengthy, gripping series of written narrative keeping the story moving along. Every NPC interaction is essentially four or more paragraphs of unique dialogue moving either the main story or side content forward. One could very well compare The Necromancer’s Tale to reading a book—but one where you control the narrative progression, characters, and ending.

That being said, it is hard to call The Necromancer’s Tale a “game” with a completely straight face. Honestly, there is not a whole lot to do mechanically speaking; the world has a 3D environment you can explore, and there are instances of turn-based combat. The combat is fun if only for the inclusion of your undead thralls, but to be completely honest, if it was removed from the game completely, I don’t think I would miss it too much.

The 3D exploration also distracted from the narrative in the worst way at times; without any quest markers and vague journal entries as if our character actually wrote them, The Necromancer’s Tale wants you to walk around, explore dialogue, and interact with objects to solve the mystery of where to go and what to do next. While the game does an incredible job drip-feeding you information about the overarching mysteries through casual and believable conversations, the act of walking around trying to find what to do next can be tedious. One Steam reviewer aptly called this part of the game essentially a game of Minesweeper where you wait to stumble upon the information needed to progress; this was such a good comparison I just had to steal it for my review.

While the gameplay side is light, The Necromancer’s Tale does what it wants incredibly well, presenting a story that is superbly well-written and deeply engaging. The characters all felt real and interesting (though some were certainly dialogue skips for me), and the game’s depiction of black magic was phenomenally interesting. Solid RPG-style mechanics also exist within the game to legitimately make the narrative evolve, allowing you to take many actions or routes depending on your character’s stats.

The Necromancer’s Tale features classic RPG character design; at the start, after hearing about the preceding events, you create your character by picking between options regarding how you were born and what happened in your childhood. With no previews of what these options give you, you choose based completely on how you imagine your character’s story, with the corresponding stat changes reflecting that. I absolutely adore this old-school style of character building and hope to see it in more RPG games soon.

Not only is this section very immersive, but I was impressed by how comprehensive the game is with developing your character’s backstory. Each decision not only changes your starting stats but branches out to create an incredibly long and diverse character story. For some, this section might drag on, but I found myself thoroughly impressed and glad for the attention to detail.

Finally, I found the game’s 3D art interesting—while it put me off at first, seeming pretty old and kind of harsh in some color choices, it began to grow on me. This is especially true of the character models, which I found superbly well done considering how much personality they could convey with very little detail.

Try Hard Guides was provided a Steam code for this PC review of The Necromancer’s Tale. Find more detailed looks at popular and upcoming titles on our Game Reviews page! The Necromancer’s Tale is available on Steam.